Pavlo O. Dral
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pavlodral.bsky.social
Pavlo O. Dral
@pavlodral.bsky.social
Prof. at Xiamen University and NCU in Torun, co-founder of Aitomistic.
Researcher and educator in AI-enhanced computational chemistry.
All opinions expressed are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of my employers.
Our novel approach of directly predicting nuclear positions for various molecules as a function of time, rather than doing stepwise propagations as in molecule dynamics, is finally published in JCTC:

doi.org/10.1021/acs....

#compchem #mlchem #moleculardynamics
February 13, 2026 at 5:47 AM
Our recent @ChemicalScience article ‘AIQM2: organic reaction simulations beyond DFT’ ( pubs.rsc.org/doi/D5SC02802G ) has been listed in the journal's 2025 most popular machine learning and automation articles collection.
#ChemSciMostPopular #compchem #mlchem #aichem
February 12, 2026 at 12:59 AM
@angewandtechemie.bsky.social with @savateevlab.bsky.social !

I love such collaborative studies, which allow us to look at the practical problems faced in experimental chemistry. Here, we deepen our understanding of the nature of chemical processes and sharpen our theoretical tools.
February 5, 2026 at 7:02 AM
Our publication on enabling trajectory surface hopping with electronic structure methods without analytical gradients with #ML is out in @chemicalscience.rsc.org !

Read more about it: doi.org/10.1039/D5SC...

Detailed tutorials, etc., are coming soon. Stay tuned!

#compchem #mlchem
Gradients not needed: ML-driven propagation of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics without reference gradients
The recent development of machine learning (ML) methods for quantum chemistry has tremendously boosted the efficiency of molecular calculations. In this work, we use ML to enable nonadiabatic molecula...
doi.org
January 23, 2026 at 12:48 AM
A great piece by @robinson-julia.bsky.social in @chemistryworld.com on how #AIagents will democratize #compchem. Soon, manual QC inputs will feel like building pyramids. Students already start by chatting with Aitomia. Gen-2 coming soon.

Check out the older version online at aitomistic.xyz
January 9, 2026 at 7:03 AM
Reposted by Pavlo O. Dral
Have you ever wanted to use cutting-edge #compchem methods to propagate NAMD simulations, such as QD-NEVPT2, but were stopped by the lack of available energy gradients?
If so, check out our new preprint by M. Martyka, J. Jankowska, H. Lischka, and @pavlodral.bsky.social : doi.org/10.26434/che...
Gradients not needed: ML-driven propagation of nonadiabatic molecular dynamics without reference gradients
The recent development of machine learning (ML) methods for quantum chemistry has tremendously boosted the efficiency of molecular calculations. In this work, we use ML to enable nonadiabatic molecula...
doi.org
December 17, 2025 at 1:49 PM
It is my great pleasure to be a subject chair of #RSCPoster 2026! Looking forward to learning about your great science through your digital posters!
December 14, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Very humbled to see our research with @jakubmartinka.bsky.social, Lina, Mikolaj, Yi-Fan, Jiri, and @mbarbatti.bsky.social among the most-read recent articles in J Phys Chem Lett.

Paper: doi.org/10.1021/acs....

My personal account of the study’s background:
dr-dral.com/jpcl-a-descr...
December 10, 2025 at 1:25 PM
I am looking forward to participating in Faraday Discussion's Molecular excited states theory and experiment, 14-16 September 2026, Cambridge, UK, rsc.li/excitedstate...

Deadline for Oral abstract submissions is 15 December 2025.

#compchem #aichem #mlchem
December 3, 2025 at 5:26 AM
Just out in JPCL — our accurate ML approach for nonadiabatic coupling vectors!

This work took years — from early ML-FSSH struggles to finding physics-based descriptors (energy gradient differences) and improving MLIPs
#compchem @mbarbatti.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1021/acs....
A Descriptor Is All You Need: Accurate Machine Learning of Nonadiabatic Coupling Vectors
Nonadiabatic couplings (NACs) play a crucial role in modeling photochemical and photophysical processes with methods such as the widely used fewest-switches surface hopping (FSSH). There is, therefore, a strong incentive to machine learn NACs for accelerating simulations. However, this is challenging due to NACs’ vectorial, double-valued character and the singularity near a conical intersection seam. For the first time, we design NAC-specific descriptors based on our domain expertise and show that they allow learning NACs with never-before-reported accuracy of R2 exceeding 0.99. The key to success is also our new ML phase-correction procedure. We demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of our approach on a prototypical example of fully ML-driven FSSH simulations of fulvene targeting the SA-2-CASSCF(6,6) electronic structure level. This ML-FSSH dynamics leads to an accurate description of S1 decay while reducing error bars by allowing the execution of a large ensemble of trajectories. Our approach is generalizable to more states as we demonstrate for a three-state ML-FSSH simulation of methylenimmonium cation. Our implementations are available in open-source MLatom.
doi.org
November 6, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Delighted to present our AI-driven #compchem work at ICCOC 2025, Shenzhen. Huge congrats to my PhD student Xinxin for winning the Best Poster Prize on AIQM methods — she is surely one of the brightest up-and-coming scientists!
November 1, 2025 at 2:58 AM
Nice work by my co-supervised PhD student Mateusz!

You can read the work at doi.org/10.1021/acs.... .
October 25, 2025 at 6:56 AM
Continuing the previous post, here is one of my favorite examples of how things can go wrong when you use universal #ML potentials - MD of H2. I love to show this example to my students, and it is in my online course (aitomistic.com/en/sub/course) at @aitomistic.com .
#compchem
October 16, 2025 at 1:55 AM
My talk at @Smlqc1Smlqc -2025 is now online.
This is the third SMLQC edition ( www.smlqc2025.com )!
Talk is covering #ML models for #compchem simulations, also available with #AIagents at the @aitomistic.com Hub ( aitomistic.xyz ).
youtu.be/gIpE_pqF2e4
SMLQC 2025, Pavlo O. Dral's talk "Universal AI Models for Ground and Excited States"
YouTube video by Prof. Pavlo O. Dral
youtu.be
October 8, 2025 at 2:29 AM
Reposted by Pavlo O. Dral
Poster on Aitomia presented by Hassan Nawaz at #MDMM25, where @pavlodral.bsky.social also gave a talk on Aitomia.

Showcasing Aitomia's ability to autonomously design #compchem workflows with #AIagents, such as calculating reaction thermochemistry and spectra, on aitomistic.xyz
October 1, 2025 at 6:27 AM
1/2Just came across this preprint discussing #ML potentials' failure even for H2.

In my course, I have been showing this to my students already for many years, with both astonishing examples of failures of popular foundational ML models and tutorials on how to solve them.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.26397
Are neural scaling laws leading quantum chemistry astray?
Neural scaling laws are driving the machine learning community toward training ever-larger foundation models across domains, assuring high accuracy and transferable representations for extrapolative t...
arxiv.org
October 1, 2025 at 6:21 AM
1/2Just came across this preprint discussing #ML potentials' failure even for H2.

In my course, I have been showing this to my students already for many years, with both astonishing examples of failures of popular foundational ML models and tutorials on how to solve them.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.26397
Are neural scaling laws leading quantum chemistry astray?
Neural scaling laws are driving the machine learning community toward training ever-larger foundation models across domains, assuring high accuracy and transferable representations for extrapolative t...
arxiv.org
October 1, 2025 at 6:21 AM
hard work by Xinxin (the first author), she has many more such models in her library!
You can run #compchem simulations with AIQM2 as described in our tutorials: mlatom.com/docs/tutoria...
Also, online via a web browser on @aitomistic.com Hub at aitomistic.xyz (free)
September 21, 2025 at 5:35 AM
All-in-one leaning is a very handy method to learning from multiple levels of theory (and data sources in general) simultaneously. Better than alternative transfer learning in many respects. Just out in JCTC: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
September 12, 2025 at 8:45 PM
It is always nice to see creative ways the users apply our methods and software (UAIQM & #MLatom) to solve their #compchem problems:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

You can use them online too at the @aitomistic.com
Hub.
August 20, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Back in 2021, I wrote about a future where computers could autonomously run & analyze #compchem simulations: shorturl.at/Vq4tq
Now, I’m thrilled to be building #AIagents that make this vision real!
August 19, 2025 at 11:52 AM
AIQM2 just got published in @chemicalscience.rsc.org !

This #ML method's high speed, competitive accuracy, and robustness enable organic reaction #compchem simuls beyond what is possible with the popular DFT methods. It can be used for TS opt and dynamics, often with chem. accuracy.
August 15, 2025 at 10:00 AM
#AI + atomistic, #compchem, simulations evolve so fast I have to redo my hands-on materials multiple times a year 🤯
That's a continuously updated Living Course is the way to go.
🆕 Pre-Register: Living Course on Aitomistic (#AI + Atomistic) #compchem 🚀
📚 Self-paced + interactive like webinars
🧪 Hands-on via Aitomistic Hub
Continuously updated by @pavlodral.bsky.social
Info & signup 👉 www.aitomistic.com/en/sub/livin...

#mlchem #aichem #ml
August 14, 2025 at 2:02 AM